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Updated: June 6, 2025
But her voice was lost in the clamour, as every one, deserting breakfast, crowded about Lord Durwent, and half in jest demanded to know what the ramshackle empire had to say for itself. In a voice that grew tremulous with anger, the host read the details, point by point, and as the seriousness of the thing broke upon the hearers, even the very lightest tongues were for the moment stilled.
In spite of this almost unexampled set of references, the governess was completely unable to cope with Elise Durwent. Her pupil was openly irreverent about the first; and when the governess, after the time-honoured method, produced an endless vista of exceptions to the rule in French grammar, the girl balked.
'They heard of his death, of course? 'It isn't that, old son; it's the horrible disgrace. It only leaked out a couple of weeks ago from one of his battalion, but it's common property now. The old boy was absolutely done in looked twenty years older. 'What has leaked out? said Selwyn, stopping in his walk. 'Didn't you hear? Durwent was shot by court-martial drunk, they say, in the line.
Durwent was gazing over the grass into the distance, oblivious of everything about him, and in the blue of his eyes, which borrowed lustre from the morning, there was the mysticism of one who is searching for the land which lies beyond this life's horizon. 'I wonder, repeated Durwent dreamily.
Having performed this duty, the servants did nothing more; but one could not help feeling that they were just outside the door, like a group of prompters, ready to render instantaneous assistance should the amateurs falter. Lord Durwent made a kindly and efficient supervisor of the commissariat table, and there was no question of it could boil an egg with any one in the county.
He had been at Roselawn a couple of days before he had a chance to do more than observe Elise Durwent as one of the party. She had been his partner at tennis and bridge, and a dozen times he had exchanged light talk with her, but there was always about her the defensive shield of impersonal cordiality.
To the insatiable curiosity of Austin Selwyn the party presented an infinite chance for study, as well as an unlooked-for opportunity to meet Elise Durwent under circumstances which should either cement their friendship or else demonstrate its utter impracticability.
Lady Durwent glanced, interrogatively about the table; Madame Carlotti took a hitch in her gown; Norton Pyford emptied his glass and sat pensively staring at it as if it had hardly done what he expected, but on the whole he felt inclined to forgive it; Johnston Smyth made a belated attempt to be sentimental with the Honourable Miss Durwent, whose lips, always at war with each other, merely parted in a smile that utterly failed to bring any sympathy from her eyes; Mrs.
When she was nineteen years of age Elise came to live with her mother, and as the fiery beauty of the child had mellowed into a sort of smouldering charm that owed something to the mystic atmosphere of convent life, Lady Durwent felt that an ally of importance had entered the arena.
Unhampered, therefore, by a husband, Lady Durwent prepared to invade London Society, only to receive a shock at the very opening of the campaign. The Ironmonger had preceded her! It is one of the tragedies of the élite that even peers are not equal. The law of class distinction, that amazing doctrine of timidity, penetrated even the oak door of 8 Chelmsford Gardens.
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